{"id":15724,"date":"2012-04-24T17:27:32","date_gmt":"2012-04-24T22:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=15724"},"modified":"2012-04-24T17:27:32","modified_gmt":"2012-04-24T22:27:32","slug":"alan-wake-ep1-hey-listen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=15724","title":{"rendered":"Alan Wake EP1: Hey, Listen!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/e9ZTpP-Aku4\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=e9ZTpP-Aku4'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>In our meandering conversation, I took away this: This game was either intending to be scary and generally failed, or it created expectations of scary-ness that it never intended to fulfill. <\/p>\n<p>One of the biggest sources of tension in Silent Hill 2 was that you never knew what to expect.  The uncertainty creates doubt, which leads to a certain degree of suspense. It left you to figure things out for yourself. This flashlight explanation was not needed. Or if it was, it could have been reduced to a little text message like &#8220;aim the flashlight at the attacker&#8221;.  I&#8217;m usually in favor of easing players into a game as carefully as possible, because learning under stress can lead to frustration.  But this is one case where a little bit of confusion would have been fine. <\/p>\n<p>The Ball of Light even greets you warmly. He&#8217;s friendly. He takes the time to say goodbye and lets you know you can have your dream back now, instead of just vanishing without explanation.  He&#8217;s basically Alan Wake&#8217;s own personal <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Navi_(The_Legend_of_Zelda)#Navi\">Navi<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I like a lot of things about this game, but this opening is a major problem with regards to the tone it&#8217;s trying to set. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Link (YouTube) In our meandering conversation, I took away this: This game was either intending to be scary and generally failed, or it created expectations of scary-ness that it never intended to fulfill. One of the biggest sources of tension in Silent Hill 2 was that you never knew what to expect. The uncertainty creates [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[188],"tags":[232,208],"class_list":["post-15724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spoilerwarning","tag-alan-wake","tag-spoiler-warning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}